Selective call communication (paging) systems typically comprise a radio frequency transmitter/encoder (base station) that is accessed via a link to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and a radio receiver (e.g., a selective call receiver or the like) that has at least one unique call address associated therewith. Operationally, the selective call receiver receives and decodes information transmitted from the base station, the information including an address and possibly a data or voice message. When the selective call receiver detects its address, it may alert a user and present message information received.
To implement messaging capability in a paging system, the address and message information referred to are encoded and subsequently transmitted using a protocol such as GSC (Motorola's Golay Sequential Code) or POCSAG (a code from Great Britain's Post Office Code Standardisation Advisory Group). These protocols are adapted to reliably communicate messages to at least one selective call receiver and are well known to one of ordinary skill in the art of Paging systems. A typical selective call message may consist of an address signal if the message is a tone only message, or an address signal and a data packet if the message is a data message.
Present selective call messaging systems transmit either voice or a keypad entered messages primarily input via the telephone. Furthermore, entry of these messages is completely manual, that is, you must physically enter (or input) the message information each time you want to send a message. This method is not only inconvenient, but it is inefficient. In this case, the user must not only remember the cap-code or pager address of the subscriber's selective call receiver (pager), but they must also, when dealing with multiple message recipients, re-enter the message for each transaction.
Another disadvantage of contemporary selective call signaling systems and entry formats is that their complete utility is not afforded to a subscriber. This comes about because of limited paging entry means and a complete lack of a deferred scheduling function. This effectively eliminates using a selective call receiver as a proactive notification means, thus relegating it to serve as an "after the fact" notification device.
Consequently, what is needed is an apparatus and method that allows convenient entry, storage, transmission, and future transmission of selective call messages to be broadcast by a paging system.